GAME REPORT

Khimik Hold Off CSU Asesoft

Khimik Yuzhny held off CSU Asesoft Ploiesti 90-83 in the first leg of the Eurochallenge Qualifying Round in Ukraine on Wednesday.

Stanislav Zavadskyi scored a game-high 22 points, while Curtis Milage dished out 11 assists (also a game high) to guide Khimik to the win.

Catalin Burlacu tallied 21 points for Ploiesti in the losing effort.

The contest was closely fought through the first ten minutes with Ploiesti managing to get ahead 28-24 entering the second quarter.

A jumper by Goran Bajic gave Ploiesti a 6 point lead to start the second, but Khimki outscored the visitors (23-14) over the period to go into halftime up 47-42.

Khimik edged out ahead 68-58 off a three-point play by Milage with 1:42 to go in the third, but Doneal Mack made a three-pointer to pull Ploiesti back to within five (68-63) heading into the fourth.

Ploiesti got to within 1 point (77-76) with under five minutes to play, but Khimik proceeded to outscore the visitors 13-6 over the remainder of the contest to get the win.

The second and deciding leg with be played on October 6 in Romania.

COACH QUOTES

Quotes Khimik vs CSU Asesoft

Khimik player Travis Sentel Garrison"We tried to play the team game today. To play a tuff game. Definitely we had some problems, because first of all we let number ten to score sometimes even quite easily. It was a hard game. But anyway we won and it’s count. We’ll have one more game with this team so will definitely be ready next time."

Zoran Kalpic, Khimik head coach"First I would like to congratulate my players with this game. We was having very serious opponent this time, with the very serious players. It was actually difficult to play defense against such players. We tried but sometimes we failed. I’m not happy with the first quarter because we let them to score 28 points. Sometimes there were moments when we rushed the game when it was so important just to wait few seconds. But will try to do better in the second game. I want to congratulate my players and the opponents with a very good game."

Doneal Mack, CSU Asesoft Ploiesti player"We played well offensively, we had a lot of break downs defensively. The coach from the other team was saying that they played harder and I can tell that they were playing hard till the end of the game and we made a lot of mistakes at the end. And it was the main reason why we lost this game."

Vladimir Arnautovic, CSU Asesoft Ploiesti head coach"We made a lot of stupid mistakes. Few times we gave our opponents the ball in the hand. I’m not happy with the turnovers but we did good in offense. Actually we lost the rhythm in the second quarter when we had a problem with the team fouls, personal fouls, and it was like ten points for BC “Khimik”.I can tell that we have some young players from America, that used to play for college teams.>They are young and inexperienced, especially in the games for the European teams. But it’s our problem. As I told I’m happy with the offense we shot some easy point. But we are not the team who throw the tree- throws. As you know BC “Khimik” have two or three players who are great shooters from the outside. We’ll try to fix these problems till the next game."